I visited my favorite charity shop and bought more than 20 books. I paid less than 1 € / book. This one I bought for Alvhyttan´s May Botanical Challenge. I'd like to read this book before releasing it.

A delightful story from a Victorian countryside when organs replaced a choir in a church and a schoolmistress should keep her love affairs in secret. Fancy Day's name reflects her character. She really irritated me. I guess her character has been discussed a lot when Under the Greenwood Tree was published. From todays point of view she is just a stupid flip of a girl.

Lovely read.

I'm sending the book to Joika, who wan it in my 1234-raffle on Finnish forum.

Thank you, dotdot, for this great prize! I haven't read Hardy before and I really look forward to get to know to his writing soon. I am a huge fan of Victorian literature and I've heard something about this novel. It's said to be humorous and also the back cover of the book promises something like that. The country persons of the novel have drawn both positive and negative critical comments - I wonder what you, dotdot, thought about them? Or maybe that question is just too obvious for us modern people, whereas in the time of the publishing this kind of matter had overwhelmed the reading circles more than we can understand. That's what I find interesting when reading Victorian novels, the way of thinking those days shakes me up many times.

Well, anyway.. I will read this first and comment then more. Today was a great mail day which I'm much obliged to you, dotdot!

The first part of the novel was a bit of a mess for me. It wasn't interesting at all and I thought that maybe Hardy is not for me. The dialect spoken was also difficult to follow at first and simple dialogues needed concentration (I didn't notice that there was a glossary for it in the last pages of the book).

Luckily in the half way things got more interesting when the character of Fancy Day was introduced and the story focused on the relation of Fancy and Dick. I liked it how their conduct was described. They were persons with mistakes. I was wondering how the story would end: should it be Dick who changed his mind or Fancy or both or neither of them. So there were many possibilities for the end. I also liked that. And because of the flaws of the characters anything could really happen.

But all in all, I'm not sure whether I would like to read Hardy more. The country people described were certainly different for what I've used to when it comes to Victorian novels. Nevertheless, I didn't like that many of them was made to be so simple-minded. But their thoughts about love and marriage were interesting to read.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

I let this book to see Norway. It's in the bookcrossing shelf in café La Baguette.

Released in the zone. Thank you!! :-)

Released in the zone. Thank you!! :-)

Picked it from the OBCZ shelf at my first BookCrossing meet at LaBaguette OsloS.

I like Hardy and was drawn to its size (light & slim). It will fit perfectly in
my 'ladypurse' and will be read on the move :-).
---------------------------------------------
Update May 4, 2011

It has taken me almost 1,5yrs to finish this book.
Insane, if you consider how much I loved it.
The humor, the language, the characters and the story itself
- all excellence, all classic.

So why did it take this long?
Simply a matter of wrong place at the wrong time, meaning always the wrong handbag.
It is a proven fact in this house that books that make it up to the bedroom have a better chance of getting read quickly, than books I stash in handbags.

Anyways, loved it - and it is now, finally, ready to move on!

Sending it off to Canada and gypsymom, to be traded for Michael Connelly.
Hopefully you will enjoy it as much as I did.
(and read it faster -)

Blogpost in Norwegian:
http://moshonista.blogspot.com/2011/08/delight.html

This book arrived on the day I left on holidays. I grabbed it from the mailbox and hit the road. Since then we've been through 6 states, 6 National Parks and many state parks in the USA. But until we arrived in Kanab, Utah where we decided to splurge on a classy RV Park we didn't have internet access. Thus I am very late in journalling that it safely made it across the Atlantic and halfway across Canada. My apologies and many thanks for trading with me. I gather my book hasn't made it to your door yet. I hope it won't be too long.

I really loved this slim book. Hardy is a fantastic writer. Considering this was only his second published novel and his big hits are yet to come it might have been expected that this book would be lightweight. But it's not.

The story is classic. Boy sees lovely girl and immediately falls in love. Girl pretends she doesn't see him but he persists and she admits she loves him. Father refuses the match because boy isn't rich or well-educated. Girl goes into a decline and father relents. A wedding date is set. Then a well-educated man proposes to girl and she is tempted but she realizes she can't do that to boy and she refuses him. Boy and girl get married but girl keeps secret of the proposal. They ride off into the sunset together.

I could see this as a western or a modern romance; that's how classic this story is. What makes it unique is Hardy's descriptive prose. His portrayal of the windy, rainy day when Fancy is walking home from her fathers leapt off the page and I could see the tree boughs whipping around every which way. He also has great characters although the main characters aren't as interesting as the secondary ones like the tranter and the "witch".

Thanks so much Ingalill for agreeing to my trade request. This is one of those books that is hard to find in bookstores so you really helped me out in finding it for the Hardy Reading Group.

I'll take this book to the meet-up tonight. If no-one takes it home it will be waiting on the OBCZ shelves for a new reader.

I love Thomas Hardy so when gypsysmom brought this book to tonight's Bookcrossing meet-up, I had to have it! As a bonus, it's a short classic, and the back cover describes it as "delightful and humorous", not the words that first come to mind when thinking of Hardy - even for those of us who love him.

Thanks gypsysmom for bringing this to the meeting and thanks also for the lovely bookmark from Colorado.

This book has done a fair amount of travelling so I'll do my best to keep it moving once I'm finished with it.